I now understand that your goal was not to keep Jews Jewish – but to keep haredim - haredi
HAREDIM RALLY against coronavirus restrictions in Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim
No
matter how much we Modern Orthodox Jews and Religious Zionists write
manifestos and hold conferences showing how our way of integration is
superior to your Torah-only view, when we sit down with a pen and paper
to draw “a Jew,” he isn’t wearing jeans and T-shirt, but rather he is
wearing a beard and peyos (hair sidelocks) and looks like you. When
asked to imagine a rabbi, he isn’t clean shaven with khaki pants; he
looks like you. We still look over our shoulders to you as some sort of
barometer that we haven’t gone too far with our embrace of secular
culture, that we haven’t strayed too far from Yisrael Saba (the spirit
of the Jewish people throughout their generations). Your commitment to
Torah and Jewish continuity is unbounded.
When
I was a kid in the 1980’s, I needed tutoring in Talmud. My parents used
to take me to the local haredi yeshiva, The Yeshiva of Staten Island,
to learn with the boys there. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb,
but I was welcomed by the students very warmly. Students went out of
their way to introduce themselves to me and get to know me. These boys
would walk miles to our small local synagogue to help boost our
struggling minyan. There was a soda machine there that did not accept
dollar bills at the time. In those days a can of Pepsi cost 50 cents.
There was an empty coffee can there filled with quarters. You would put
your dollar in the can and take out four quarters to make change to put
in the machine. I remember being shocked that you can leave a can of
money out and that there was no fear that someone would take it. But
then I thought, “Oh! This is a yeshiva! Of course everyone here is
honest!” That was what characterized a “black hat” or haredi yeshiva in
my mind: integrity and love of their fellow Jews.
As
a rabbi and educator myself, I can unequivocally state that I wouldn’t
be an observant Jew today if not for the haredi education and influence I
received. They were quite literally the determining factor in my
understanding of my place as a Jew in this world and my relationship
with God. My own decision to be a rabbi and teacher was born out of the
need to be the next link in the chain of Torah that you represented to
me. Every student of mine is in debt to the haredi rabbis and
institutions that have formed my soul.
But
either I misunderstood you all these years or something has profoundly
changed. I had thought that your commitment to Torah was to preserve Am
Yisrael (the nation of Israel). I thought that your commitment to Jewish
continuity was to the whole. I now understand during this terrible
pandemic that your goal was not to keep Jews Jewish but to keep haredim
haredi. You have demonstrated time and again by both your actions and
inactions that you completely abandoned the idea of Klal Yisrael (the
entire Jewish people). You are so afraid of losing your sons that you
sacrificed your fathers.
Your
community knew the risks of opening your schools and holding mass
weddings/funerals and yet you insisted on doing so to preserve your
haredi way of life: not Judaism, mind you, but your haredi way of life.
The irony of the funerals being held for victims of COVID-19 was
completely lost upon you. You refused to give real credence to the
experts in public health so as not to give any authority to them in the
eyes of your children. You could not and will not allow a secular
person, or even a non-haredi Orthodox Jew serve as any source of
authority in your community. So afraid are you of losing your children,
that you dismiss anything that doesn’t come from your camp to make sure
your children think there is nothing outside of their haredi community
to look for.
Your
actions have prolonged the lockdown which is killing businesses and
destroying families. You have needlessly increased the load on the
public health care system, endangering the lives of the entire country.
Why
do you not feel a responsibility to the nation as a whole? Why have you
abdicated Am Yisrael in favor of your own communal needs? Your refusal
to enlist in the army has already made you a target for not caring about
the nation as a whole; why are you exacerbating the situation during
this pandemic?
I
just paused to reread my words and can see that they can be read with an
angry and accusatory tone. I do not mean them that way. I offer them in
soft sadness and with an offer to please correct my understanding if I
am wrong. There are whole political parties here that refuse to sit in a
government with you because they too see things this way. People see
you on the streets and instead of getting a warm fuzzy feeling of
meeting a beloved relative, they have fear and scorn for you. And
because of your distinct look their scorn and fear is for Torah and
Judaism as well. This cannot go on. I care too much about you and too
much about Judaism to remain silent.
I
am acutely aware that Modern Orthodoxy isn’t perfect. I can point to
many problems in our community that our embrace of secular culture has
caused. I see our failures and can see how having televisions in our
homes, going to the army and university alienate some of our youth from
religion.
But we believe the good far outweighs the bad. And our ability
to admit to the problems allows us an avenue to address them.
Can
you admit you have failures and that your way of life isn’t perfect
either? Can you honestly say that the good outweighs the bad? I am not
asking you to answer me, I am only asking that you answer yourselves.
But what I am asking is for you to please be more sensitive to the rest
of us and start taking responsibility for others outside your camp as
well.
The writer holds a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and teaches in post-high-school yeshivot and midrashot in Jerusalem.
